Apples and Oranges Index

I always love the optimistic titles that some newspapers have in Dubai;
for instance, this morning on the Gulf News website:

"UAE ranked 123rd happiest place"

When you click on the link it's revealed that it's ranked 123 out of 143 countries. Does that even result in the country being qualified as 'happy'? I think not; technically speaking, the UAE is the 20th unhappiest country on Earth out of those ranked, obviously a more accurate title would have been "UAE ranked 20th unhappiest place".

As it turns out the index/report has little to do with happiness and more to do with pollution etc. In fact, after reading about the report itself, I'm not entirely sure what it is even about.

The happy planet index is stupid in that it is called 'happy planet', at first glance it could be thought that it is solely a ranking the countries environmental impact. Instead the index apparently rates the human well-being and environmental impact of the country and also asks such questions as (according to GN):

“All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole?”

Half of the GN article goes on about life expectancy and things like per capita carbon dioxide emissions and then they launch into a question like that. "Happy Planet Index" is a wholly inappropriate name, I think it should be called the "Apples and Oranges Index".

Dubai Metro Thoughts

In two months time the Dubai Metro will hopefully open and I dare say that I have positive expectations of it (I know, I'm losing my touch). The whole concept of being able to buy a pass and go from abra to bus to metro is somewhat first worldish, and hopefully it works out well. It will also change Dubai for a lot of people in that they'll be able to finally walk somewhere (can't wait to do some street photography)

When the idea of the Metro was first being toyed with I didn't think it sounded realistic, and pretty soon it was being built quite quickly and now it's nearing completion (at least the first route anyway). So I think I have to tip my hat and give some positive thinking towards it.

It's really one of those things you'll be able to witness so few times throughout your lives, will people really ditch their cars for the metro? will the roads here suddenly empty up a bit? will I no longer have to refer to Sharjah as roflsharjah just because of the traffic and avoid driving there? Obviously only time will tell, and although I think the fares are really low enough that people will change from cars to metro eventually, though I would suggest the RTA find some way of offering people who sell their cars 6 months of free metro travel just to get things going and to get more and more people out of traffic/parking/etc.

Personally I will probably use the metro to go to a few places around town, but for going to Shisha or anything late at night it doesn't really work out as the service stops at midnight, somehow I don't really think the midnight closing time fits in with socialising in Dubai (on weekends) as many people stay out late. Fortunately, there is a metro station close enough to my house that I could walk there in winter so I really hope it's as accessible as I hope it will be.

The RTA has some other cool stuff coming up like bicycle tracks and hopefully they'll fulfill what they've been saying for a while and actually produce a drivers handbook, stop people with tinted windows, get people to use indicators, stop war for the rest of eternity, defeat Etisalat and perhaps even get this Metro thing to be a success.

New Blag

I have started up a new blag which is unrelated to the content of this one, it's going to be more about movie, game, etc reviews and probably a bit more diverse.

Head over to samurai-sam.com and check it out. (already have 2 reviews up)

Tripod Soup

The Bastikiya area near the creek is such a great area to visit; I go their often. I used to go down by the creek when I was really young to the Fatafeet café which had shisha, barbecued corn (mmmm) and at one stage the world's largest shawarma stand (DSF 2000). Unfortunately that got demolished for some reason and now the area is just pretty much a walkway, it's really nice in the winter months, although I would argue that it is missing a good shisha café that it so desperately needs.

I know that a private area like a mall or a shopping center has every right to ask you for filming permissions, but this is a public area, it is publicly accessible and there are no "no photography" signs posted anywhere. It's so publicly accessible that there are actually street numbers. Then why, I ask do security guards seem to patrol the area and tell people they're not allowed to take photos?

(to be clear, I have a camera (DSLR) on a tripod)

I've had the same conversation so many times before, it always goes like this:

"You have permission?"

"No"

"Your camera is too big, small camera is ok"

"So what if my camera is too big? This is a small camera."

"Problem if it is too big, this is a big camera"

"Why?"

"Because you need permission"

"Why?"

It always just goes on and on and on and on and it usually ends in security guards going off and me staying with my camera in the same place doing the exact same thing and the world surprisingly not coming to an end. Believe it or not, it is normal for heritage sites to have photographers take photos in (!)
The whole big camera/small camera crap really makes no sense, I could easily pop along with a Leica and take publication quality photographs discreetly using that or practically any sized digital camera without a tripod and no one would say anything—once again there are no "no photography" signs posted anywhere. In fact speaking of permissions, the security guards that come and hassle people trying to take photos never ever have permissions themselves, I've never seen a public area that has had a security guard in Dubai before. Having been through the big camera/small camera motions with more security guards than there are stationed at Fort Knox I know that it usually relates to either having a grey lens or any long/wide lens (which is usually a high-end canon lens), a large camera, and/or most importantly: a tripod.

A tripod rings alarm bells in every single security guards brain in Dubai, and I really have no understanding of why. Sure I could just not use a tripod and shoot handheld and no one would do anything, but get this: people use tripods. People have used tripods since the invention of photography.

This isn't some top secret military installation, it is a HERITAGE site. On top of being a heritage site, it's a heritage site that contains art galleries which in turn contain photography, yes, it's pretty much an art district.

Now let's make clear I'm not saying that a multi-million dollar Hollywood production should be able to come and just film for free without any permission, all I am asking is that someone with a camera, and a tripod who is taking photographs for non-commercial purposes should not be hassled in public areas. Is that too much to ask? And how do you determine if someone is taking photographs for non commercial purposes? You don't.

Video: Abras on Dubai Creek

Abras on the Creek from samuraisam on Vimeo.

Click on this link to see the video in HD (make sure to click the HD button on the right of the frame to turn HD on)

Editing job probably isn't that great, just fiddling around with 5dmark2 video feature for now.

YouTube link

Bluetooth shenanigans from Dubai Police

I think we've all had Bluetooth message request from Dubai Police around the place; I was recently at the New Spinneys intersection on Al Wasl Road (Wikimapia link) waiting at the lights when my phone beeped.

I was absolutely intrigued as to what Dubai Police would think could be so important that they send it to people who are driving cars—all the message contained was an animated picture that flashes between Arabic and English and simply states

"Pay your fines using kiosk by Credit Card"

"One touch closer to you"

Yes that's right, Dubai Police trying to distract me from driving by sending me messages about fines, which can be caused by using mobile phones while driving. So in theory if I checked the message and got fined I could pay for the fine having gained knowledge of payment methods from the Bluetooth message. (I should point out that a Bluetooth message is different to an SMS, it must be accepted in most circumstances before it can be received, and if it isn't accepted then it is lost once the mobile is out of range.)



It seems a bit stupid to be trying to message people who are driving; As best I can figure, the kiosk inside the Spinneys supermarket is sending the messages a bit far. I can't believe nobody thought about the range that the Bluetooth messages would have though; it seems like quite a basic aspect of placing a kiosk. It is also quite an intrusive form of advertising; Bluetooth messaging is renowned for being the most common method for viruses to spread over mobile phones.


In any case there is a lot of this kind of advertising that goes on in Dubai—I don't really see what the police are trying to inform me of, obviously if I within xyz distance of the kiosk then I'd probably know it is there, and if I was going to pay fines wouldn't I go to the machine to find out the payment methods? Or go to the Dubai Police website? Or call up Dubai Police? What is the statistical possibility that someone walking/driving past a kiosk would be interested in paying with a credit card let alone actually be interested in using the machine to check their fines or even pay them? Probably something like 0.0000001% How many people actually have their Bluetooth on 24/7 out of all those people? A fraction of a percentage of a percentile of a proportion of 1 out of 4000 people.

They also seem to have the same kind of creepy choice of words as Etisalat (which I wrote about here)

Etisalat: "We are closer to you."

Dubai Police: "One touch closer to you"

Dubai Police wants to touch you.

Getting a drivers license in Dubai part 1/3

I've been putting off getting a license since I turned 18; I simply haven't had the time or haven't had a visa or I was living in another country that had public transportation. If I was smart and had the ability to predict the future I would have gotten my license before the RTA took control of the licensing process in Dubai. This post is my experience in getting my license. It took me 11 months…

Now let me stop you right there. 11 months. Eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. 11 months is a long time. A very long time when all you're trying to do is get a driver's license and especially a long time when you're the one busting the driving schools ass about lessons etc, It's not like I was slacking off, it actually took 11 months. Assholes. Anyway…

It also cost countless amounts of money, and took the patience of a saint to finally get my license in March, which means much of this process is from April 2008 onwards till March 2009. During this time the processes will have changed so please remember that. Most of the process here is indicative of the RTA taking over everything and trying to push standards a bit higher than possible.

M y friend Ahmed™ got his license at Dubai Driving Center; he drove to and from the driving school in a family car and did wheel spins and donuts beside the driving school (which happens to be right next to some Dubai Police station) and sat his test twice before actually getting his license.

As I'm not Ahmed, I don't drive without a license, I won't drive to the supermarket down the road using the backstreets, I won't drive to the grocery and I won't drive anywhere because it isn't worth it to me.

As my friend has/had a few contacts at said driving school I decide to apply to it too, it's not the biggest or best, but it's a company that takes money and supposedly provides lots of paperwork on RTA letterheads so how can I complain. And to be clear, by 'contacts' I don't mean turning up one day and getting a pass immediately, I mean assistance in getting test dates sooner/the next day instead of having to wait around for 4 years dicking around at some driving school just so that the RTA to announce teleporters around Dubai the day after I get my license.

The problem is that Ahmed's friend left the driving school as soon as I signed up, pretty much leaving me somewhat in the lurch.

There are a variety of reasons that I need a driving license; my work would specifically require a car (sure, I could work without a car and get taxis/lifts around but having a car and license opens up some unique quick-money opportunities), I also have personal reasons (independence etc) and I also want a license because I'm sick of going out with my girlfriend and sitting for 2 hours in a taxi queue and getting pissed off and being unable to do anything about it while the taxis that I do manage to get just end up driving the wrong way and at the same time denting a huge hole in my pocket.

I sign up and pay my money in advance for the whole thing. I specifically ask "Am I paying for everything with this payment, including test fees etc" and am told that I am paying for everything. In the end it turns out that I had to pay extra for every single test that I sat, so no I wasn't paying for everything.

I go into a room and get an eye test; my eyesight in one eye isn't the best (near-sighted or something), I ask "so does that mean I need glasses?" and am told that I do not. In the end it turned out that my license says that I require glasses, am I going to go back to the RTA and risk them taking away my license to find out? Hell no. I'm pretty sure if I add up all the things the driving school told me and compared them to what actually happened it'd paint a perfect impression of what driving schools in the UAE are like.

My initial impression is that the driving school is run like an early 90's Dubai government department, there is a separate section pretty much just for women and the queues for men are those cliché 10 people wide, 1 person deep queues, on top of that they have that 14 hour lunch break during the middle of the day at which time the queues remain empty.

When you're in the driving school you'll probably notice people with bags full of licensing paperwork, some of these people must've been at it for a long time and spent an absolute fortune trying to get a license, which is practically trying to get a future—most probably a better salary/job.

Once I've handed everything in I must wait 30 days for the infamous 'RTA approval', what's the approval for? Nobody knows. I did later see a form laying on a desk in the driving school that states that all new applicants must wait 45 days (logically no reason is provided). During this time you can't do anything at all, you just wait, there's really no reason at all for the waiting period except to anger you and quit your license and try and use public transportation or something. I was told someone would be trying to get me past this RTA approval process but it didn't end up happening.

Check back on my blog in the coming days for part 2.

McDonalds Breakfast in Dubai

Recently McDonalds announced the introduction of 'McBreakfast' in Dubai.

This list of branches on the Explorer website shares all the branches that are currently serving McBreakfast in Dubai.

Here is my review:

I've had McBreakfast in Australia and it is composed of burger like 'McMuffins' with a patty or bacon and an egg if desired, usually this is accompanied with a hash brown which is pretty much one of the most delicious food items you can find on earth. The other thing the McBreakfast has is hotcakes or pancakes or whatever you want to call them, obviously packet mix made but they taste good.

I've never understood quite why McDonalds in the UAE hasn't had McBreakfast right until now, it's almost as if someone woke up one morning and just decided they wanted to avail themselves to make more money all of a sudden—I can't see why McBreakfast wouldn't have been a success 10 years ago.

Firstly the service was pretty appalling; it's quite a long wait in the drive through to get the McBreakfast. Both times I have tried McBreakfast since it was introduced I have been to the Jumeirah Beach road branch and the wait has been a bit excessive in my opinion—particularly on the second time, which involved waiting for quite long.

In terms of McMuffins I'm confused—I know for certain they have a sausage and egg McMuffin which I'm pretty sure is chicken, then similarly they have one which is solely a sausage McMuffin (no egg). The sausage patty tastes like chicken and I'm pretty sure it is chicken as opposed to beef in other countries though I can't tell you because the McDonalds UAE website doesn't offer the breakfast menu information or indeed any proper nutritional information in the nutrition section, which is kind of funny considering it is called the 'nutrition' section. Instead the 'nutrition' section of McDonalds website has several categories such as "Innovation & Leadership", "Transparency", and also "Balanced Lifestyle", "Nutrition & Kids" and "Menu". Those first two sections seem completely irrelevant to what I'd expect to find when I'm looking for nutritional information. The latter two sections tell me that a children are recommended to have at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity per day, how helpful but at the same time irrelevant. Anyway, the patty, whether its chicken or beef (90% sure it is chicken) is quite herby, so if you're expecting McBland then it is most certainly not, perhaps a little too herby/salty for some.

Back onto the McBreakfast… The hash brown is good enough, it just seems really oily, like ridiculously oily, and it also seems to be a bit thicker than the hash brown I'm accustomed too—in turn the potato in the middle is nice and soft and the outside is crisp.

The hotcakes are decent enough; they just don't seem as good as they should be; the syrup came in a little unmarked plastic tub instead of McDonalds packaging, so technically speaking it wasn't McSyrup.

The scrambled eggs are kind of pretty normal/boring.

The other stuff on offer such as coffee and orange juice I'm sure you've all heard about before at some stage in your lives so I don't think it necessary to discuss them. I'm not much of a coffee drinker but I tried some and it seemed quite good and I've been told by regular coffee drinkers that it is quite good so it must therefore be quite good.

So to sum up, is the McBreakfast worth it? I really don't know, if you've never had it before then I suppose it is worth trying for the novelty factor. But in my opinion it doesn't really deliver in any extraordinary way. As to whether or not it will be a success, I wouldn't be counting on it; I think a few slight changes are necessary to really get it going, such as making it more widely available. Overall I would rate it 7/10, the hash browns being the defining item on the menu.

Anyway, those are my opinions/observations. Compared to a home-cooked breakfast with bacon and eggs and whatnot it will never compare but for when you're in a rush, hungry, poor and tired McDonalds is McDonalds is McDonalds is McDonalds.

Boomtown Etisalat Weyak Failure Triangle

In any major city on this earth, there are gaming servers available 24/7. Thousands of them.

Right this very minute there are thousands of people shooting the crap out of each other. There are servers in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Kazakstan and just about any country you can think of. Right now I could join a server in any country on earth, however the large distance between countries introduces problems, so finding a local server is the best option.

The majority of these are accessible by anyone for free, often internet service providers (like Du or Etisalat) in each country commonly sponsor them for free to their own customers, otherwise they are sponsored by individuals or by hosting companies. Often they are rented out to people that want to have their own preference towards rules/maps. They cost peanuts to run, other than the cost of a computer and added software the only running cost is electricity and bandwidth costs.

In the Middle East, the UAE has the highest proportion of internet users. It has also positioned itself as probably the optimum gaming location within the Middle East (as witnessed by GAMES08 conference held in Dubai).

In the United Arab Emirates there are few servers. Very few. 13 of these (the majority) are owned and operated by Etisalat, no one else is in a position to create servers because of severe bandwidth limitations. Rarely is anyone seen playing on them and there is good reason for this…

Etisalat expect users to sign up for Weyak (have written about this previously) in order to access their servers. To most people reading, you're probably thinking you just go to weyak.ae and sign up and that's it. No, Etisalat actually expect people to pay 45 dirhams a quarter/180 dirhams a year for access. That's pretty much unheard of.

It also seems they are blissfully unaware at how weird of an expectation that is: In fact, straight from the boomtown forums:

"as for making the servers free to play on i don't think that's an option for us, for it goes against our policy and rules"

The 'boomtown' company / Etisalat have probably around 20-30 servers, so they can't exactly be rolling in cash; I only ever see 1-2 servers with any players in them. The boomtown website claims to track statistics of 137 players, which seems a bit enthusiastic.

Reading this post on the boomtown forum is particularly entertaining, where they ask for feedback about the whole operation, and then take an entire year to reply, it's like a carrier-pigeon forum, well it's actually a forum that's half in English and half in Swedish, so maybe that's a "carrier-duva" forum. Weird. There seemed to be quite a few accusations flying around of poor modding in the past month or two, which makes it spectacularly crap for what is a paid service.

Really the whole boomtown service seems a tad disorganized, when attempting to join an Etisalat boomtown server I was confronted with this error:

Disconnect: This server is for members only. Does member nick: samuraisam belong to you. Register a free membership at boomtown.net

See how it says free? Well I fell for that crap and went to boomtown.net, guess what the first thing I saw when trying to sign-up was?

See that bit that says "45.00 per quarter", yeah, that's the most expensive free membership I've ever heard of. Even accessing a list of the servers they host requires you to sign up.

For a paid service, it is pretty pathetic—firstly I'd expect people to actually be playing on the servers, which they don't. It's like a lose-lose-lose situation:

1. Etisalat doesn't provide enough upstream bandwidth in the UAE, meaning no one can create servers by themselves
   
2. Etisalat creates their own servers and charges people to play on them
   
3. Everyone sees no one playing on the servers so they don't pay for them
   
4. Everyone loses, and Etisalat doesn't care
   

Or how about that other telephone company in the UAE (du) come along and create some servers, which they have! Although it is only 2 servers, they are free to access by anyone.

Let's make a comparison from Etisalat's paid-for servers vs 2 servers that Du set up which are free to access by all.

Du server 1: Average of 11.86 players out of a possible 15

Du server 2: Average of 9.48 players out of a possible 20

Etisalats highest rank server: Average of 2.8
players out of a possible 16.

That means if you were to join Etisalat's most popular server on any random day of the year, you're likely to face 1 opponent + someone missing a limb.

Du's servers completely trump Etisalat's several times over, in fact for the entire UAE, 2 servers that du has made for a game that is 5 years old have more people playing on them than all of Etisalat's servers combined.

If Etisalat at least let people have decent upstream bandwidth (try 4-8 times as much as you currently give), servers would sprout up all around the UAE, more people would buy games, and more people would subscribe to broadband. But Etisalat wants to make 200 dirhams a year, and judging by the whopping average of 2.8 players on its most popular server, they can't be doing too well with this concept.

 

(thanks to game-monitor.com for server statistics)

Pepsi and Coca Cola and the Great Plastic Bottle Failure

I miss the old days.

Picture them:

It's the middle of summer, you haven't eaten all day, the AC everywhere you go only seems to be half working, and your mouth is dry, so dry. You want a drink, but not water… Something sweet… Something refreshing…

You pick out a nice cold glass bottle of Pepsi. If it's too close to the outside of the fridge it'll be a little warm so you dig behind all the bottles in the front and pick out the coldest bottle you can find. You go through your wallet and find the magical lone dirham coin and you flick it on the cashiers table and you walk outside and open the Pepsi. You down the entire contents of the Pepsi and are instantly hydrated once again, the beverage tastes sweet. It is Pepsi, in a GLASS BOTTLE.

Guess what? Some asshole at Pepsi (and Coca Cola) decided that glass bottles weren't the 'in' thing anymore so they moved from cans and glass bottles to… plastic bottles? Who the hell approved that crap? I know! Some money grubbing idiot is who.

Long long ago, Pepsi and Coca Cola used to come in cans and glass bottles, now when you go to a petrol station what choice do you have? A plastic bottle. I don't want a plastic bottle you idiots.

Now listen here people, there are several things that a dirham coin is useful for in Dubai, and these are the uses:

• Buying tea
  
• Buying a can/bottle of Pepsi
  
• Depositing money in exchange for parking ticket
  
• Providing change to huge supermarkets that make so much money and yet cannot afford to keep their registers stocked with 3 dirhams of change.
  

Someone at Pepsi decided that 1 dirham cans just weren't going to work out anymore, so at every single petrol station in Dubai, you now can only purchase Pepsi in a plastic bottle (because everyone wants carcinogens) at the price of 2 dirhams, but don't worry, for double the price you are getting 50% more Pepsi. Yes that's right the mathematics don't work out do they?

I don't really care about the 1 dirham vs 2 dirhams part of the problem, what I get annoyed by is that I'm getting more Pepsi, and guess what happens to that Pepsi? It's too much to drink easily, so I finish half of it, I leave it sitting for 5 minutes and it is no longer cold, I don't want that crap. The plastic doesn't hold the temperature well and wait for it…

It tastes different.

I shit you not, it actually tastes different; how could a company like Pepsi or Coca Cola be so blind to their customers and abandon them like this and try and pretend they're giving us the same product? I drink a lot of Pepsi and Coca Cola so I know the taste of the drink, I know that it has now changed. Yes, this is a repeat from the 1980's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke), Pepsi in the middle east obviously hasn't read any history books and are trying to change it's drink and is screwing up.

Almost no one else is stupid enough to stock Pepsi in a plastic bottle because they know that no one wants that crap—only petrol stations stock it (and some supermarkets), but then again petrol stations obviously don't know anything about convenience and customer demand as I explained in my last post.

Once again this boils down to "oh no we can't increase the price of a can of coke up to 1.25", which is funny considering most groceries and supermarkets still manage to sell cans of coke at 1 dirham a piece.

(as for me being unable to decide between Coca Cola/Pepsi in this post, it's because I drink both, Pepsi would be my preferable drink though, but I don't care, and they've both done the same thing and switched to plastic bottles)